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Friday, August 12, 2011

just another friday evening in the ER

late this afternoon, as i was pushing a wheelbarrow of bunny poo across the garden, husband came out and said, "wife, i think i need some help." he was very calm and so i didn't really think so much of it. then i realized he was holding his hand. he calmly said he needed some stitches and that we should probably go the ER. and i totally freaked out!! as one does.

he had a small piece of toilet paper wrapped around the thumb (which i most decidedly did NOT want to look at) and so in a flustered (to say the least) state, i ran and grabbed him a proper cloth to put around it. he strangely took off his shoes in the hallway and then he sort of swooned from the pain on the floor. i went into total panic then. i asked him if i should call an ambulance (i still hadn't seen the thumb). i'd not seen him so white and i was really worried.

he said, no, just find my wallet with my medical card in it and let's drive to the ER. we have a hospital locally, but it has no ER, so we had to drive 30 miles. behind a variety of slow combines, tractors, lorries filled with pigs and lost people from the netherlands pulling their caravans (and i've oddly gone british in my vocabulary). it seemed like the longest 30 minutes of my life.

when we'd barely gone 2 km from home, husband had some strange shock reaction (it's pretty intense to saw into your thumb with a band saw) - his eyes rolled back into his head, and he breathed very strangely and was white as a ghost. he recovered quickly and didn't seem to be aware it had even happened. that pretty much freaked me out.

we arrived at the ER (p.s. vejle - you need more signs directing people to your hospital), parked right outside (thank you for that, vejle hospital!) and went in. husband was seen immediately - a nurse ushered him in, asking me if i wanted to come in too (i said definitely not, please direct me to the waiting room). you see, i really can't stand the sight of things that are bleeding. it makes me feel faint.

so i settled into the waiting room with my P.D. james (which may explain the brit vocab above). i was totally impressed with how quickly husband's details were taken and he was seen by a doctor. we're talking within less than ten minutes of arrival.

i was sitting in the waiting room when i was approached by a doctor, asking, in danish, if i was swedish. in one of those moments where your brain tries to make sense of a situation by running through all the likely scenarios on fast forward, i concluded that husband, who spent his first five years in sweden and is half swedish, had had some kind of horrible shock fit, reverted to swedish and they were coming out to tell me that they'd lost him in some kind of freak stitching accident.

thankfully, that was not true and he came out, thumb bandaged, told me he only had two stitches and that he would like to go home now and eat our leftover pizza. but could we first stop and get him some chocolate and some cider.

and that was the beginning of our weekend. i hope the rest of it is a little bit more boring.

OMG that was difficult! I hate the sight of blood too. Sounds like his blood pressure may have dropped for a moment on the way to the ER. Glad to hear he was okay and ready to eat after that scary ordeal. Hope the rest of your weekend is calm!

And now he needs to keep his tumb up. At least that was the advice I got when I cut off a piece of my middle-finger. Imagine me, sitting at my office-desk answering the telephone with my middle finger up!!!!

I wish you the most boring weekend you can wish for and hope that the tumb of husband heals quickly.

You handled that very well with a good end result. My Grandpa was a Minnesota back-woods-man who lost the top of his finger and part of his thumb to a band saw. (I'm not going to tell you what he did to himself with an ax!)

I one cut into my thumb with a meat slicer. That was intense enough, I could only imagine what it would be like with a band saw, which I have worked with before. Here's to a wonderfully boring weekend and quick healing. Tell him to be more careful next time. ;)

True story--a few years ago my husband cut a piece of his finger off while doing some road work. Well-he did not know he cut his finger, because it was about 15-20 degrees that morning and I guess he fingers were numb to the coldness. The finger is fine and to look at it one would never know the tip was lost.